Looks like a bunch of people are trying out Jaiku after "tasting" co-presence with Twitter. To me, Jaiku, which existed before Twitter, is a bunch of Helsinki mobile jocks getting into the Web 2.0 of it all whereas Twitter is the Web 2.0 crowd "getting" co-presence.

Twitter was funny for me because it was like the whole "laptop crowd" getting the "aha" that Europe and Asia had with SMS awhile back - the idea that the Internet isn't about "cyberspace" that turns on when you open your laptop, but that the Internet was something that you could carry around with you and that could ping you when it needed you.

Jaiku was neat because it was everything we had all been telling Nokia that we wanted in mobile devices, but that Nokia never seemed to deliver for us. It took a small group of mobile geeks who also got the Web to build an integrated experience.

I've been helping the Jaiku guys out a bit as an advisor and I'm also a friend of Ev's. Interesting to see this convergence of from two completely different worlds of mine (mobile and web) with the attention of the "Twittersphere" tuned in. FWIW, I don't think that either is a knockoff of the other, but I do think that they are now influencing each other. It reminds me a bit of blog software in the early days...

Having said that, there are a number of differences despite the similarities on the surface. Jaiku comes from a "presence" background allowing bluetooth proximity, phone idle time, ringer mode and other things to trigger state changes - the messaging came later. Twitter, on the other hand, is primarily messaging, which as we all know, is just a flexible and manual vector for presence information.

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This is the Final Stage of Humachine Convergeance, prior to internet skull implants and sending mind-mail with the twitch of a smirk lever: Twittering away in safe, idle chatter brilliance, enforced pithy and brevity of pity.

Micro-journaling in computelepathy, the thought bullets of digital text talk, secret channel with special sauce, TWITTER: the next big communication channel/community for the New Super Bloggers of Blogosphere 4.0, the Multi-Interactive Semi-Private Cross-Links.

We are now networking electro-textually through the digital effluvium of blogs and tweets.

my only gripe so far with either of these is the binary privacy/intimacy/access control. No granulairity at all, and explanatiuons of the on/off switch are poor.

Case in point: I am being assaulted with contact requests on both systems but I have decided that only my "real friends" get to see my posts, and so all the "hey let's try this out!" people are getting refused "friendship".

Who's gonna tackle modeling the width and breadth of human social interaction into a UI and UX that translates well and is useable in both mobile and PC contexts? I don't want sliders or checkboxes...

(perhaps a gestural interface, and language, that the mobile device can read. So when you need to set "how you feel about and how you gauge Person X's relationionship to you", you can naturally make a hand movement that adjusts various parameters along axes of respect, affection, opacity, etc etc. I know some dancers... )

Great post, Joi! Twitter is an attention DIFFUSER, and, ultimately, has the potential to increase a sense of stress. Jaiku, on the other hand, has the potential to support a sense of well-being. One is "in your face" community and the other enables a lovely and more passive sense of connection. There's a time and place for each. I was at Ignite Seattle http://www.igniteseattle.com/ a few nights ago where Twitter was being used in a fun way. Day to day, Jaiku is non-invasive and supportive.

@6 it's not much of an API compatibility thing, but I have Jaiku reading from my twitter RSS.

Strictly on the web side, Jaiku has the RSS importing which is really well made and clearly distinguishes it from twitter in that it pretty much could be a 'lifestream' of sorts, with RSS feeds from all over sent to it.

As with any web/mobile thing I'm too scared to go ahead because I'm scared of my mobile phone provider and the nasty internet bills.

Hi Joi, it was nice meeting you at the NIS tech meeting a couple weeks ago. As a Board member you probably know about my situation, though to my knowledge you were not a part of the group who twice voted to reject my son from entrance to NIS. As someone who understands the power of the internet, let me tell you that in addition to my lawsuit against NIS, I have three myspace sites (including one for my band - Tokyoniz), a Youtube site (jonhall99), and a facebook site. I intend to "surgically" remove Terry Christian from NIS using the power of IT, but if he refuses to resign it would be analogous to Osama Bin Laden hiding in a mosque and refusing to leave. The "smart bomb" will be replaced with a 5 ton "bunker buster". I have just posted a new blog entry at my myspace site so please add me as a friend so you can check it out. I believe both of us want what is best for Nishimachi, unlike TC, who is only thinking of his own career. Please talk some sense into the other Board members before it is too late.

Hi Joi, it was nice meeting you at the NIS tech meeting a couple weeks ago. As a Board member you probably know about my situation, though to my knowledge you were not a part of the group who twice voted to reject my son from entrance to NIS. As someone who understands the power of the internet, let me tell you that in addition to my lawsuit against NIS, I have three myspace sites (including one for my band - Tokyoniz), a Youtube site (jonhall99), and a facebook site. I intend to "surgically" remove Terry Christian from NIS using the power of IT, but if he refuses to resign it would be analogous to Osama Bin Laden hiding in a mosque and refusing to leave. The "smart bomb" will be replaced with a 5 ton "bunker buster". I have just posted a new blog entry at my myspace site so please add me as a friend so you can check it out. I believe both of us want what is best for Nishimachi, unlike TC, who is only thinking of his own career. Please talk some sense into the other Board members before it is too late.

I wanted to chime in and ask everyone to consider loopnote as well. Gordon makes a comment that it would be cool to have a common API between Twitter and Jaiku. I can't go into specifics yet but look for something soon from us that will let you play with both services together. I'm also wondering what people think about the messaging of individual "what I'm doing" vs. the messaging of topic-specific information such as news, sports, team meetings, etc. Both of these are possible with loopnote as well as with Twitter. I think there are unique audiences for each type of message.

Not quite sure if I like either yet, but I do agree with Boris about access control. I just deleted a friend from twitter because he was updating too much and it was distracting.

As for Jaiku, I really don't like that it was asking for my chat login information. There is no reason at all that I should ever give out this information. After they have that, there is no reason that they can't spam all of my contacts *as me*. I understand that it's so they can search my contacts for other Jaiku users, but there is no indication that they're not going to send the others messages saying "Jim says: Come join Jaiku!" when that may not be what I want at all.

Joi, didn't you get burned a while back by some service that asked for your login info spamming your friends?